“Go,” he says hoarsely.
He can barely stumble forward, but I guide him into the Backwoods Forest, following Linus and my mom. The flames behind us send eerie, wavering shadows and streaks of orange light along the paths. I hear a popping explosion somewhere behind us, and then one over to my right, but the deafening roar of the fire recedes. Twice Burnham trips, nearly dragging me down, but I brace him hard, and we stagger on.
“Almost there!” Linus calls.
We pass the red-and-white gift shop and finally reach the shadowed wall where we first came in. Burnham sags down to the ground, holding his head in his hands and breathing heavily. Linus lays Ma on the ground beside Burnham, and I check to make sure she’s still breathing. Behind her, the wall looks taller than before.
Linus is bent over. He spits into the dirt and wipes his wrist over his mouth. He looks sideways at me.
“How are you doing?” he asks.
“Me?” I ask. I’ve got no problems compared to Burnham and Ma. “I’m fine.”
Linus shoots a look toward Burnham, and then turns back to me again.
“We have to get them over,” he says.
“I know. Ma first?”
Linus nods. He climbs on top of the rickety old ice cream cart and reaches down.
“Give her to me,” he says.
I strain to lift my mother up to him, and he lifts her carefully higher until he can rest her limp body on the top of the wall. The next moment, he scrambles on top of the wall beside her. Then they both disappear.
“Burnham,” I say, touching his shoulder. “We have to get you over the wall.”
He twists to look at me, which starts him coughing again, but then he gets to his feet. I put his arm around my shoulders again and help him to the ice cream cart. He starts to climb but then has to stop to cough. Linus appears at the top of the wall and reaches down a hand.
“Burnham, let’s go,” Linus says. “You’ve got this.”
Burnham takes a deep breath and reaches up. Linus grabs him and basically hauls him over. I scramble up the ice cream cart last and heave myself to the top of the wall.
For a moment, I look back through the trees toward the center of Grisly Valley, where the fire has spread to a dozen buildings. Bright yellow flames lick along the roofs, and a new line of fire is already feeding along the curves of the Glue Factory roller coaster in Bubbles’ Clown World. It’s going to go up like matchsticks. The whole place is.
Dread stops my heart. Larry is still in the Lost and Found.
“Rosie!” Linus calls.
I hurry down the other side of the wall to where Linus has picked up my mother again. Burnham is standing bent over, with his hands on his knees and his head low. Swiftly, I get one of his arms over my shoulder again and wrap my arm around his back, and we all take off for the minivan. By the time we get there, I’m a mess of guilt and impatience.
“We have to get back for Larry!” I say. “The whole place is starting to burn!”
“I know. Get in,” Linus says. He’s lifting my mother onto the bench seat in the middle of the minivan, and then he pivots into the driver’s seat. Burnham slumps into the front passenger seat, and I barely have time to close the door before Linus pulls onto the road.
“Do you know the way?” I ask.
“Yes,” Linus says.
I brace my feet to keep steady as Linus accelerates, and I quickly check to see if Ma, beside me, is still breathing. She is, just as evenly as before. Her features have a leaden quality, like she’s been asleep for decades rather than days, like she’s turned into a new kind of stone. She has no idea what we’ve been through and where we’re going.
“Oh, Ma,” I say, my voice aching.
“How is she?” Linus asks.
“Still sleeping. Can you go any faster?”
Linus takes a hard right. I glance anxiously ahead as we pass a dark stand of trees, and our headlights touch over an old, crooked fence pole. Then, in the distance to our right, I can see the fire in the park. The keep is blazing higher than anything else, but the tall Fodder Mill ride and the End of Daze tower are burning now, too. We’re circling and getting closer to the front, where the main entrance is.
Burnham’s breath is raspy. “Take us to my jet,” he says. His voice is painfully raw. “Dubbs and Lavinia are meeting us there.”
“We’re getting Rosie’s stepfather first,” Linus says.
Burnham coughs again, hacking loudly.
“Hang in there, Burnham,” I say. “It’ll just take us a minute to get Larry.”
“Ian’s dead,” Burnham says. “I couldn’t get him out.” Another round of coughing cuts him off.
“It’s okay. You can tell us later,” I say. “Just breathe.”
We take another tight curve, and I shift with Ma. As her hand slips, my gaze catches on her wedding band, and I feel a new surge of urgency. The sky over the park has turned a molten orange, and black, smoky clouds roil up into the night. I can actually hear the inferno. Linus turns our minivan onto a narrow road and races down to the parking lot. He swerves to avoid a fallen sign, and aims toward the flagpoles of the main entrance.
“See the car?” I ask, pointing toward Berg’s white sedan.
“I see it. Hold on,” Linus says.
Our wheels screech as he pulls to a sharp stop beside Berg’s car, and I lurch out of the minivan.
Sharp, smoky air makes me choke, and the noise of the fire is a rushing wall of sound. The Grim Reaper statue flickers with orange reflections, and a gust of wind tugs at my shirt. The arching entranceway to the park stands silhouetted before the bright, fiery buildings. The palm trees burn like paper candles. Even from outside the turnstiles, I can feel the heat, and my heart sinks. I stagger forward, unbelieving. The whole corner row of buildings that includes the Lost and Found is one blazing mass of burning timbers. Trying to go inside to save Larry would be suicide.
“We’re too late,” I say, aching.
“Hey,” Linus says. He wraps his arms around me. “We didn’t know the whole place was going to burn.”
Guilt broadsides me anyway. We could have pulled Larry out of the Lost and Found and moved him to the entrance here before we went for the van with Ma. We could have pulled both Ma and Larry out here, and one of us could have run around faster to get the van. Better solutions seem brutally obvious to me now.
“I’m so sorry,” Linus says.
“What am I going to say to Ma?”
I won’t have any way to explain.
Linus hugs me harder, rocking me against him. “She needs help. Burnham, too. We need to go,” he says.
I stare again at the burning wall of flames, watching a wild spray of sparks fly up into the smoke. I thought I despised Larry, but now, I can’t believe he’s gone. I can’t believe he gets the same fate as Berg.